High on any list are the slow-paced, hot-weather activities that leave plenty of time for fetching ice cream, catching frogs, ridin’ bikes and fooling around with pals. We’ve plucked some photos of past summers in Denver — the archive is full of them — to illustrate that times change, but pleasures endure.

Neighborhood kids in 1933 splashed around the city’s Benedict fountain and wading pool at east 20th Avenue and Court Place. The caption reads, “To this oasis in the ‘asphalt Sahara’ of downtown pavements, children throng daily by the hundreds for cool, safe, comfortable play.”

In Arvada in 1965, the North Jeffco Recreation District kept kids busy with organized activities such as archery lessons. Our photo is by Cloyd Teter.

Fishing in the city’s parks is a classic summertime activity, as Kirk and Kenneth Washington, below, discovered in 1977. The wiley fishermen have a net poised to snag their crawdads. An Ernie Leyba photo:

Summer reading programs let children enjoy quiet hours escaping to other worlds and times. Here, Jason Ortiz, 13, savored a book at the summer reading program at Rishel Middle School in 1988.

In 1986, The Denver Post invited its readers to share some Christmas memories. The stories submitted were sweet and funny, or sad and memorable, but all were touching in the way one might see a family scene through a window at twilight.

One story was sent in by reader Julia Tapia, age 70, of Denver. The Post ran a photo of her with her sister, Mela Solano (at right in photo above), with whom she baked empanadas each year as their family tradition.

Here is Julia’s Christmas memory:

“I don’t remember doing much for Christmas until the year I turned 7. It was 1923 and we lived in Vaughn, a small town in New Mexico where children didn’t know about things like Santa Claus.
Spanish families has different customs in those times.

“All that changed one evening in early December. My mother was cooking the evening meal over an old pot-bellied stove when my father came home from his job as a laborer for the railroad.

“He changed into a freshly starched shirt and tugged on his familiar, dark suspenders. Then, he joined us children. We were five then: my brother Jake was 11, Frances was 9, I was 7, Mela was 5 and Emma was 3. I remember my father’s face that night. He looked tired from the day’s work, but his eyes twinkled as if he had a secret he couldn’t wait to tell.

“After dinner, he got out the Montgomery Ward catalog that my mother used to order material for our clothes. She made them without a pattern by cutting the cloth while she looked at the pictures. But on this night, my father didn’t look at cloth. He turned to the toy section and said we’d better put in our order to Santa Claus.

“Well, we didn’t even know who Santa Claus was! There was no radio or television in those days to tell children he would come on Christmas if they were good. My father told us Santa Claus would come down the chimney of the stove on Christmas Eve and leave us presents. I remember how we all sat at the kitchen table looking at that catalog.

“Oh, there were so many beautiful things to choose from! Jake wanted a play farm set and Frances asked for a sewing kit because she liked to embroider. My two younger sisters wanted the same dolls.

“But I saw this beautiful porcelain doll with jointed hands and curly brown hair. She even had green eyes made of real marbles that closed so she could sleep. I always wished I had light eyes like my mother’s, which were hazel. Bue mine are dark brown. So, the minute I saw that doll, I knew I wanted her and nothing else.

…

“Christmas Eve finally came and we had to keep our own traditions. Because Vaughn was so small, the priest only came once a month, so we couldn’t go to midnight Mass like we do today. But my mother sang Noche de Paz (‘Silent Night’) in our living room and we all joined in as we bundled up to go ask for oremos (an old custom where children go door to door singing in exchange for treats).

“Later we made empanadas (stuffed pastries). My father would bring home the coal and the meat and in those days you didn’t have oil, so we had to use lard. My job was grinding the beef tongue for the filling.

“After we finished, all the girls put on new flannel nightgowns my mother had made for us. We were so tired from the excitement, but we giggled and worried about whether Santa Claus would really come. We tried to stay awake and wait for him. But then morning came and we’d been sleeping and missed him.

“We ran to the living room and saw that what my father told us was true: Santa had come in the night!

“And there was my beautiful doll!

“When I think about my father and how he brought us Santa Claus, I feel so much love for him, just remembering these things and knowing how wonderful he tried to make our childhood.”

The Denver Post story, which ran on December 21, 1986, went on to note:

Julia Tapia, a widow and parishioner at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, has four children, 10 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. She moved to Denver in 1944 and was a domestic worker for 25 years. She still makes empanadas for Christmas.

Traditions endure. Merry Christmas.

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Wall hangings, plant holders, handbags… you name it, there was a macrame design for it.

Every groovy apartment in the 1970s had its fair share of hanging art called ‘Macrame,’ which was handcrafted and lovingly hung as (sometimes) functional home decor. Don’t worry! There is no indication that the craft of Macrame is making a comeback. But students of history should really know, and appreciate, the saturation levels this craft was able to attain in the American market at the time.

Hanging art was all the rage in the 1970s. Here Julia Wright displays her hand-crafted macrame designs for a 1976 show in Denver.

The craft has ancient roots. It is thought to have originated with Arabic weavers and was probably spread around the world by seafarers. There are many naval associations due to the knot-tying skills involved. Sailors whiled away time at sea tying up hammocks and creating fringes and belts, for example.

In 1977, artist Debbie Salts used a cone of jute, or rough twine, for her macrame creation.

Materials varied, but the rough twine so associated with the 1970s era was usually jute. Large beads were often incorporated. Sometimes white cording was used. There was no end to the variety of items produced, as these photos show.

Macrame showed up in many fashions of the 1970s. Here, a choker, belts and bag display the colorful knots of the craft.

Macrame was employed to decorate all kinds of household items in the 1970s. Here, a Message Center!

Macrame had a long and lasting role to play in many 1980s garage sales. But as with any fad, one never knows when it could rush back into fashion, invading our homes and cradling spider plants in sunny corners… so stay on the alert.

[Denver Post archive] Frederick O. Vaille was just 29 years old when he coaxed established Denver businessman Henry R. Walcott to a saloon to lay out his plan for a telephone company, whose corporate ancestors still ring phones today.

Less than three years after Alexander Graham Bell called his assistant in to work, a telephone was ringing in Denver, and Frederick O. Vaille answered.

Vaille was the first to strike telecommunications gold in Colorado, while others were looking for the shiny rocks squatting in rivers and swinging picks.

Bell’s call to Thomas Watson came on March 10, 1876, and on Feb. 24, 1879, gangly wires were delivering calls to the Vaille’s Denver Dispatch Co. near 16th and Larimer streets, the same intersection that today provides Denver with a Cheesecake Factory.

Vaille was a 28-year-old Harvard graduate who saw need and potential — the future of communicating — perhaps the same way Facebook Mark Zuckerberg’s saw it as a sophomore at Harvard in 2004. He met up with another Harvard man in Denver, local lawyer Henry R. Wolcott, a state senator with loads of business connections. Two years older than Vaille, he had come west to serve as manager of the Boston & Colorado Smelting Works in 1869. In the Denver saloon run by Samuel Morgan, they laid out a plan for a company that still serves this city 133 years later.

But like everything in Denver in those days, from silver and gold to land and cattle, it wasn’t about building a legacy as much as it was about making some money. And at the time, the telephone was becoming hotter than the iPhone today, because it cost $9 to send a telegram to New York City at a time when working all day in company mine paid $3.

Vaille landed the 17th American Bell franchise nationally, less than a week behind Minneapolis and less than a year after New York City. The chance to get rich always draws guests, and seldom are they welcome.